When It Rains
by teen freak
Summary: When you want me to stay, I'll have to leave... But never forget, Zuko... I'll always be back...Zutara Fluff T to be safe


**A/N: I'll make the Author's Note short and sweet. I had a lot of fun writing this, and I hope you'll have just as much fun reading it.  
Disclaimer: I do not own Avatar OR the song "When it Rains" by Paramore. NO matter how much I wish I did.**

**Happy reading,**

**When it Rains (Zuko's POV)  
By Paramore**

_And when it rains, on this side of town it touches…  
Everything…_

Growing up in the Fire Nation, one doesn't get many open-minded views of the world's diverse cultures. I was one of the few to notice, one of the select few who were regarded as the black sheep in the generation. I learned to keep my mind shut, and I learned not to speak up when I wanted to. Some lessons, of course, are learned far better than others.  
Even through the Fire Nation's ignorance of different cultures and the accomplishments of the other Nations, I was able to discern a couple of traditions that, given my naïve and innocent state of mind, seemed a bit odd and sometimes unnecessary. I learned about the annual Earth Kingdom parade, one that stretched all the way from Omashu, winding down the mountains, and ended in Ba Sing Se with a three-day long celebration. I memorized the chants that the old airbending monks used to repeat when the first day of autumn (and the first seasonal winds) arrived. The Water Tribes' importance had been dumped upon the Northern Tribe by then, seeing as the Southern Tribe had diminished in population since the war started. My mother told me all about the waterbending routines the current master's pupils organized, the festivals they would hold, and most of all, the Water Tribes were the only Nation that had ever held the biannual Four Elements Festival. My mother and father had never attended, obviously, seeing as Sozin's war had pretty much put a damper on world peace with his crazy firebending army burning down any village that failed to bow down to a picture of the Fire Lord. Nonetheless, I had studied what scarce inscriptions had been carelessly thrown in under crudely drawn illustrations of the foreign people. They had stated the obvious, things such as '_Water tribe family prepares for Four Elements Festival. Fire Nation rules!_' The latter, of course, had been scrawled across the last three words by some unruly child with a distorted mind.

Now once, when I was about nine years old, a particular picture had caught my eye. The scroll boasted about its certified recent illustrations, and I could now appreciate why. That one time, I had marveled at the two almost identical siblings displayed in a beautiful landscape of snow and setting sun. There was a girl and a boy, their ages practically indistinguishable due to their similarities. They were feeding the local penguins what appeared to be sardines, the girl giggling madly like Ty-Lee often did in front of Lu Ten. The boy was smiling slightly, watching his sister's gleeful face. I had, wrongly, cut out the picture and ran home to show it to my mother, who had smiled at my antics and explained the Water Tribes to me thoroughly. I had shown the clipping (which my mother had kept framed) to Katara, who'd happily retold the story of the hated Fire Nation artist who had painted her and her brother doing one of their most routinely activities under the excuse that he wanted to educate the Fire Nation's children.  
Ever since that picture, I had spent most of my time frantically researching Water Tribe customs (that is, until Azula learned to speak). Their ice castles were like something out of a fairytale to me, as were the waterbenders that usually proposed to their intended with blinding waterbending displays in the main auditorium. Naturally, among these customs, I stumbled across the very strict tradition that demanded unmarried "maidens" were obligated to spend the Winter Holidays (which celebrated the start of a new water cycle) with their families until they brought home a fiancé.

With this clearly in mind, I had consulted every historian in the capital about the probability of inviting Ambassador Katara to the Snowflake Festival successfully.

"Why a snowflake?" she asked (obviously, it worked.)  
"Excuse me?" I said politely, nodding my head to a nobleman and his wife as they passed us.  
"I mean, this being the _Fire_ Nation and all," she gestured around her as if the answer to my question were very obvious and I was simply missing it, "Why would your people celebrate something so foreign? I thought you'd have like a flaming festival or a fireworks display or something more… _not watery._"  
I couldn't help a chuckle as I answered, "Snow is something very rare in the Fire Lands, and the only time it visits us is in the first official day of winter, and thus considered a cause for celebration."

_Just say it again and maybe,  
You won't miss a thing…_

I led her to the middle of the market we had entered, which was alive and buzzing with chatting people and romantic couples. I grabbed her hand gently, lacing our fingers together as she marveled at the many glowing establishments. She ooh'ed and aahh'ed at the sweets (of which she bought three pounds), and she asked me countless questions regarding the traditions that were being performed by teenage couples, who were taking the shell of an egg and breaking it on their partner's head, which became infested with confetti. One of the two eggs contained a tiny charcoal heart, and the person who found it on their head was the one in charge of choosing the next activity. Naturally, every stand sold or gave away these twin eggs, as they were called, to any young couple that wandered by. As we retreated from the sweet shoppe, the elderly woman called after us.

"Don't you want your eggs?" she yelled, waving the two eggs in the air.  
Katara's eyes glowed at the sight of them, and she tugged on my hand, "Ooh, can we, Zuko, please?"  
I squeezed her hand and nodded as we retraced our steps to the racks of candy. The woman handed me the eggs with a sly smirk on her face, then disappeared behind the endless shelves of sugar that stood at her back. I handed one egg to Katara, who looked at it eagerly then asked, "Ready?" I smirked in response and cracked the egg on her head, grimacing at the sound it made when it collided with her scalp. She did the same to me, giggling as her vision was limited by the confetti that now poured down over her face. I could see a little lump on the top of her head, and I weaved my fingers through her hair to pick it out. Her hands were ruffling my hair like a mother does to her son, trying to get every last bit of confetti out of it.  
Surely, a small red heart had lodged itself in her hair, and she seemed utterly delighted to find it there.

"Where can we go?" she squealed, grabbing my hand and pulling me to the nearest store.  
"Anywhere," I said lightly, squeezing her soft hand in response, "You pick."  
As soon as we were within sight range of the blasted man, I knew we were done for. He galloped (quite literally, I assure you) over to us and grabbed Katara's hand, placed an unnecessary kiss on it, and introduced himself.  
"My name is Li Sung," he proclaimed as if he were announcing his fight to the death with a hungry saber-toothed moose lion, "Would you and your boyfriend care to browse through my humble merchandise?"  
Katara's eyes shone, and I knew there was no point in resisting. Li Sung (horrible name, really) led us to his shop, which was packed with giggling girls that screamed at the sight of the Fire Lord and Lady Katara. They parted a wide path for us to get to the front desk, where Li Sung began over demonstrating his products. After a couple of minutes of an extensive explanation on how spoons came to be and why they were extra special when combined with a fork (he called it a 'spork', the poor madman) I announced that we had to be on our way.

"Oh, nonsense!" he all but screamed, "Here, for the lovely lady, a complimentary cup of our finest tea!" I nearly groaned at this, knowing that, as different as they may be, neither Katara nor my uncle could ever refuse a cup of tea, whether free or not. She blushed lightly and accepted the wooden cup which, according to Mr. Psycho, was the tastiest ginseng tea on that side of the capital. We cordially thanked the man, smiled politely to all the crazed fans, then cordially ran our asses out of the store. Katara giggled as she tried her hardest to keep the tea from spilling, nevertheless maintaining the pace I had set in order to escape the tea maniac.

_You made yourself a bed at the bottom of the blackest hole (blackest hole),  
And convince yourself that is not the reason you don't see the sun anymore…_

"It's men like him who corrupted my uncle," I seethed, hooking her arm under mine. She smiled widely.  
"Your uncle is not corrupted," she chastised as she tasted her tea carefully, "He is brilliant."  
"I guess," I shrugged, "He _was_ the one who suggested we bring back the festival."

She sipped at her tea again and grimaced as it scalded her tongue, "Right. And this is..."  
I nodded, "The first Snowflake Festival in a hundred years."  
"Wow."

I vaguely realized that my feet were guiding us to the Sakura Gardens. My mother's favorite haunt whenever she could tear herself away from the Royal Gardens. The place was beautiful, and I could only imagine what it looked like caked in snow. Katara seemed not to notice, too engrossed in cursing her tea for burning her tongue. She was heatedly murmuring words at it in what I assumed to be the native language of the Water Tribes, and I couldn't help a smile. A Fire Maiden would have merely excused herself for her foolishness and spent the rest of the night blushing for her silly slip-up. She, on the other hand, was listing off all of the reasons why she thought the cup of tea should undergo all seven levels of hell.  
I took her forearm and tucked it in mine, effortlessly guiding her to rest on my side.

She sighed as she leaned against me, a low sound of comfort escaping her lips. We were reaching the bench my mother occupied in her younger days, right under the largest tree in the Gardens. She finally tore her gaze from the blasted cup of tea and gasped softly at her surroundings. Everywhere she looked, I could imagine she felt almost encased in the tree's canopy of blossoms and sprinkling snow. The tiny flowers granted the snow a gentle, rosy glow as the moon shone down through the cracks in the tree's branches. The sky was barely visible through the net of leaves, blossoms, and snow, but the moon (Yue, I think her name is) slipped through to illuminate the way to the bench. It was covered in at least six centimeters of snow, but Katara and I both stood at the ready.

"I could bend it away," she offered.  
"I could steam it away," I said.  
"But it'll be easier for me, it's my element," she argued, slowly commanding the snow to rise a couple of inches above the bench.  
"But it'll be warmer once _I'm _done," I retorted, and the snow fell with a thump.

I disentangled my arm from hers and rested a palm on the bench. Steam rose from it surely, warming the air around us and removing the frost that rested peacefully on the blossoms' petals like soft, crystallized icing. Her cheeks were now a soft pink, whether from the cold or the newfound heat, I could not tell. The moon was blatantly reflected in the snow, with its light spreading itself all across the gardens for the flowers to enjoy. I had always known the gardens held something special to my mother, but, up until now, I had never suspected that that something could've been love.

_And oh, oh… How could you do it?  
Oh, I… I never saw it coming…._

For some strange, bizarre reason that I very much blamed on the Fire Nation's upraising of its children, as a kid I'd never considered that a Fire Lord must love his wife. For me, it had been arranged marriages since the very beginning. Mother had said she had someone in mind before my banishment, and I was pretty sure somebody had been "recruited" for Azula by then, too. My sister had been more the aristocrat that my father had yearned for me to be, more because I was the male than out of love. Azula was forbidden by law to take the throne as Fire Lady, but I had a birthright to rule the country initially without a spouse for no longer than a year. Destiny, however, has a funny way of twisting itself in a way that warps irony and melts significance. Never would I have imagined that five years later, I'd be escorting the Avatar's waterbending master through my mother's gardens.

That was just fine with me; I never trusted destiny anyway.

Conversation (political, of all topics) arose between us easily, and memories were brought up naturally as our surroundings triggered them. We spoke of things old and new; of how her brother had once fallen through a hole in a frozen lake and how he miraculously repeated the feat a couple of weeks ago, how Toph had convinced Aang to step out of the monk's religions for a little while and how she had once tricked him into eating meat.  
"Poor Aang," she was saying as her head rested on my shoulder, "He spent weeks repenting for his sin."  
"I thought it was hilarious," I muttered, being careful to avoid her elbow as it rushed past my side. Her breath had slowed, and I could feel the rise and fall of her chest against my arm. Her body was covered in the delicate silks of the Fire Nation, but she had wisely thrown a lightweight coat on top of these. The combination had given her a nearly exotic look that was neither foreign nor local. She was now a mixture of Fire and Water styles, something she had managed to pull off rather nicely. Sure, people had stared plenty on their way here, but she had brushed them off as easily as if they were her brother asking for his blasted seal jerky.

"Of course you did," she continued, "You were the one who thought of it."  
Her voice had grown softer, a mere whisper that traveled through branches, snowflakes, and finally landed in my ears. A glance down told me her eyes were half-lidded, and her mouth was parted invitingly. Her lips were fuller than most girls', especially those in the Fire Nation with thin lines for mouths and sleek black hair. Girls who never let their hair down unless they were explicitly permitted to do so. If I had ever told Katara that she wasn't allowed to let her hair down without my permission, she would've told me to take my permission and shove it where the sun doesn't shine.  
"You have no proof of this," I said, smile still firmly plastered on my face, "The blueprints were never found, remember?"  
She laughed openly at this, lacing her fingers with mine as the snow fell with increasing frequency. The sheet of snowflakes descending was thick, and the snow was steadily accumulating on our heads and laps. Her giggles were coming out as steamed breaths and she scooted closer and closer to me. Cheers erupted somewhere behind us, and fireworks crackled in the sky, temporarily illuminating the snow with all sorts of different, contrasting colors.  
"You got along in the end anyway, though," she murmured, closing her eyes, "That was cute."

_No, oh… I need an ending,  
So why can't you stay? Just long enough to explain…_

Her shoulders shivered a little and I wrapped my arm around her, muttering, "How can you possibly be cold under that thing?"  
She scoffed, "It's been a while since I've seen snow. I guess I've kind of grown used to the warmer climate of the Fire Nation, with all the work I've done here."  
I frowned, "But weren't you at the South Pole for a while, before you came here?"  
She smiled, as though she had been waiting for me to bring this up, "Oh, you should've heard my dad and Gran going at it. Gran-Gran was saying that it was shameful that I couldn't bear to stay in my homeland for too long and my dad kept reciting stories of our escapades with the Avatar and Sokka kept asking for sea prunes, all while Aang was trying to split them up," she took a deep breath, "I just watched."  
"Well then," I said smoothly, "Aren't you glad you came?"  
She nodded, "Unbelievably so."

We spent several moments in silence, listening to the crack of fireworks in the distance, counting snowflakes as they fell in front of us. I wondered how I would go about asking her what I'd really invited her here to ask; how could I steer the conversation towards the topic without sounding too desperate? I had rehearsed a couple of excuses with Uncle to disguise my true intentions, but had given up after the third fit of giggles Uncle fell into. I had then resorted to running the lines through my own head, imagining all the possible reactions that could come out of each one, and had tried uselessly to ignore the snickering guards that stood outside my door as I spoke to the mirror. After talking compulsively to myself, I had opted to do my share of meditation in the Royal Gardens. I had already sent the hawk to the South Pole, and had received word that it was halfway through its course. Now came the big question: How do I ask Katara to stay in the Fire Nation?

"Zuko?" her voice crept to me, "Are you okay?"  
I snapped out of my reverie and nodded, "Just thinking."  
She adjusted herself in my embrace, "What about?"  
I opted for the truth, "Ways to keep you here a bit longer." She smiled even wider and leaned closer to me, grasping my other hand in a tight squeeze. I lifted our joined hands and kissed her knuckles, keeping my gaze locked with hers at all times. A strand of hair fell across her forehead and she blew it out of her face before I could brush it away. I absolutely loved the feel of her hand in mine, her delicate fingers intertwined with mine. Her body was fragile compared to mine, and I could tell her coat wasn't doing too good a job of keeping her warm. Concentrating as hard as I could, I raised my body temperature just enough to make a difference in the atmosphere, watching as the snowflakes in front of us turned to mist. I heard her sharp intake of breath as she backed away slightly, turning her head to face me.  
"Will you?" I asked, doing my best to disregard the tears steadily forming in her eyes.

"No, Zuko," she whimpered, "Please don't do this right now. Please, just don't."  
"Then when _should_ I bring this up?" I snapped, causing the snow in our laps to evaporate, "When you're getting on the ship back to the South Pole? Would _that_ be more appropriate?"  
"Don't," she hissed, going for an aggressive edge, "I said I'd come to the Festival, I never said I could stay."  
"Why?" I said immediately, "Come on, don't give me all the 'peasant prince' crap. If you don't want to stay, just say so, Katara."  
She yanked her hand away and said, "Well maybe I _don't _want to stay with you. Ever think about that, Zuko?"  
I narrowed my eyes at her, but did not answer. She seemed to recognize her error and her eyes widened as her mouth sought to correct it, "I am so sorry, Zuko. I wasn't thinking, of course I want to stay, but I still have to help Aang around the world, you know that…"

_And when it rains… Well you always find an escape…  
Just running away…From all of the ones who love you,_

_From everything…_

She wound her arms around my waist, hugging me tightly to her as if that would make me understand that her imminent departure wasn't something she could be blamed for. I fell for it like a turtle duck offered with numerous bread crumbs. I held her as she sobbed into my chest, half of her body draped over my lap. I had never seen her cry before, save the time Azula stroke the young Avatar with lightning, and even then it had been brief. I decided it did not suit her at all. Her normally melodious voice was racked with choked sobs, and her hands were shaking as they clutched the back of my robes. I kissed the top of her head adoringly as she rambled on about how the world needed a trustworthy ambassador for the Water Tribes, murmuring sweet words in her ears, rubbing her back softly.  
"Shh," I said, "Don't cry, Tara, it's all going to be fine…"  
This, apparently, was the wrong thing to say, for she only sobbed harder and wailed out something that sounded like, "No," and "Can't." Her voice sounded awfully constricted, and around us fireworks appeared to have stopped in an awkward respect to her grief. I waited patiently for her to stop crying, waited until her eyes were red from the tears, her throat sore from sobbing, and her hands were no longer shaking. Her grip on my robe slackened somewhat, and I pushed her slightly away to stare at her face.

"There now," I said softly, tucking strands of hair behind her ears, "It'll be fine, trust me on this, alright?"  
She nodded, hiccupping weakly as she tried to wipe her cheeks; I took over the task, cupping her face and removing the tears with my thumbs, "You're staying here, and that's final."  
She sniffled and adopted a soft smile, "You're just not going to let this go, are you?"  
I made a face as if I was pondering my answer, then said, "No, I don't think so, not likely."  
She laughed under her breath, "I can't abandon them, Zuko." This wiped the smile from my face and hers, and suddenly it dawned on me that we could discuss this all night and not have any results by morning save a couple of frostbite cases. She lifted her hands to grab my wrists loosely, and I stroked her cheekbones with my thumb. The corner of her mouth quirked at the caress, and a quiet sigh slipped her lips.

I could feel my head inching towards hers, and my eyes zeroed in on her mouth. I couldn't possibly, not when she was leaving in a couple of days. What I was yearning to do right at this very minute would not help matters any, and would probably just leave us more to sort out. It would only complicate our situation, leave us wondering or regretting… And yet, I found myself whispering her name, her breath coming in hitched gasps. I had imagined this moment countless times before, had daydreamed so vividly that I could've sworn I felt her lips brushing fleetingly against mine, and finally distinguishing her soft mouth moving in sync with mine was something I could've never described, no matter how much I wanted to. The way our hands and mouths suddenly became our only eyes, the intimacy with which she breathed my name, the way our hands joined without help from our sight was really something extraordinary; and I could've bet my birthright on the fact that we were now sharing one of the rare, perfect, fairytale first kisses.  
Chastity, however, was soon becoming last month's news as bravado swelled in both our souls. Steam was steadily rising from the bench, just as her hands raked through my short and unruly hair. Her waist, I noted, was unbelievably narrow, as it fit perfectly in both my hands. My thumbs rubbed the base of her ribcage in a steady massage. Her lids fluttered as she lost focus and completely relaxed, all in my arms.

_You made yourself a bed at the bottom of the blackest hole, (blackest hole),  
And you sleep till May, and you'll say that you don't wanna see the sun anymore…_

And just as smoothly as everything had begun, it ended in a slow whirl of decelerating hands and halting lips; she sighed against my neck as I held her, placing soft kisses on her temple. My brain dimly realized the snow had stopped, and that it had taken the fireworks and sound of merriment along with it. This silence that fell between us and the gardens was something I was not accustomed to, a calm, eerie understood conversation that flowed back and forth from her head to mine. No words were spoken, and somehow I preferred it that way. The fact that she hadn't completely recoiled from my touch was definitely a plus, but she hadn't exactly vowed to never remove her feet from Fire Nation soil, either. I had taken an extra step in convincing her to stay, and she had reacted in my favor, but that wasn't exactly helping my morale in asking her to stay again.

"What do you say?" I spoke to her hair, kissing her forehead again as she wound her arms around my middle, "Will you stay?"  
She sighed the way a mother sighs when her child has asked for a sweet thrice too many times, and she answered, "I want to, you know I do, Zuko, but what will we tell Aang?"  
The name spoiled our moment entirely, as if somehow the monk had defied the laws of nature to spy in on what could possibly be the most enchanting moment of my life. She drew back slightly, as if the message of our activities would reach the Avatar in milliseconds, and she wanted to look innocent by the time he arrived. I pulled her back against me, absolutely refusing to let the mere enigmatic presence of a faraway child detract from what we'd managed to create.  
"We won't tell him anything," I hissed, "He doesn't _need_ to know anything. This doesn't concern him at all."  
She could sense my tension, I gathered, for her arms tightened on me and she kissed my jaw, "We'll have to tell him _something sometime_; he's not as naïve as you make him out to be, you know."

"That still doesn't make it his business," I said.  
"What about my brother, then?" she asked, "Do you have any idea what he would have to say about all of this?"  
I groaned, "Just how many intrusive relatives are we going to have to deal with, exactly?"

"None, if we're lucky."

"What do you mean, 'none'?" I asked incredulously, twisting my head at an odd angle to lock gazes with her, "You're the world's most protected virgin."  
She laughed at this quite girlishly, and responded, "You're probably right."

_And oh, oh, How could you do it?  
Oh, I… I never saw it coming…_

_No, oh… I need an ending…  
So why can't you stay? Just long enough to explain…_

I chucked her chin in my direction, capturing her lips mid-sentence in a light, but prolonged kiss. She moaned in my mouth, her hands holding my neck in such a way that made me doubt she really was as innocent as she made herself out to be. One of my hands wandered (of its own accord, Sokka, I swear) to her upper thigh, kneading her muscles gently.  
I had only initiated this second kiss to stop her ranting on how we could never be together, but it had gone completely out of hand. Her little whimpers, sighs, and whispers were doing nothing to discourage me, but the weight of reality was steadily gaining on my mind. We reluctantly and slowly separated (again), and I could see that the tears on her cheeks had taken an icy quality despite the highly elevated temperature our presence (and select activities) had brought upon the gardens. Katara's labored breathing rushed past my neck, and the soft, pleased smile on her face tugged at my heart in an inexplicable way. The webbed light from the moon seemed to seep into her pores, filter through the strands of her mousse brown hair, and glow on her eyelids.  
Her hands trailed down from my neck to my shoulders, and came to rest on my chest. Her head drooped on my shoulder, and a somewhat exhausted sigh escaped her lips. All around us, the mood lifted as if the blossoms had come to a denouement on a very important matter. The trees' leaves breathed relief, and I noted the snowing had stopped. This atmosphere, however ill suited our situation. Katara and I were nowhere near resolving the issue at hand, and I strongly doubted we would come to an agreement peacefully.

Several minutes, hours, days (who can really tell?) elapsed while we sat there, comfortably embraced, without uttering a single word. There was something amazingly familiar in holding someone like her in my arms, like something out of a storybook. What she said was true where politics were concerned, and although the Fire Nation and Water Tribes had co-existed peacefully for the past half a decade, the chances of Chief Hakoda allowing his only daughter (who was the spitting image of her mother, I'm told) remain in Fire Nation soil were next to none. Likewise, the subjects of the Fire Nation were not likely to take kindly to Katara's stay in the palace, regardless of her heroic achievements during and after the war.  
And so I raged an unnecessary battle inside my own head, trying my hardest to ignore the soft weight of the lithe body that so perfectly rested against me. I silently hoped she would not notice the prolonged pause, just long enough for me to sort a couple of things out.

"Zuko?"  
No such luck, obviously.  
"Yes?"  
"If I stay, which I'm not saying I will," she amended, "What would happen then?"  
I knitted my brows, deep in thought; that was not a question I had anticipated.  
"You would stay in the royal chambers in the North Wing of the palace, preferably in the very same suite you are currently occupying."  
She waved a hand in front of her face dismissively, as if to swat at an annoying fly, "Not that, I meant what would happen to us if I stay?"  
I didn't answer, for (as usual) I had not planned ahead in case my plans actually succeeded. The mere concept of her staying with me for longer than anticipated was untouchable, something I never expected to happen. 

"Are _we_ going to change, Zuko?" her voice had dropped to a stage whisper, and her eyes were wide with fear. She looked up at me as if hoping I'd have the answers, as if I had everything flawlessly planned out and had a solution to every possible hindrance we could encounter on our way. Sadly, she had no idea I was as lost as she was.  
"Zuko?"

"I don't know."

_(Take your time… Take my time…)_

_Take these chances to turn it around,  
Just take these chances, we'll make it somehow,_

"We don't need answers, Tara," I soothed, placing my hands on her shoulders, "We can do what we've been doing for the past five years."  
"Which would be how?" she asked.  
"Making it up as we go along." 

"I _am_ pretty good at that."

_**Five Months Later…**_

"My Lord, I have a black ribbon message for you."

I bowed and took the scroll with a rare smile on my face, frowning at the seal. Why would Katara feel the need to send a sealed scroll to someone who was waiting for her down the hall? Slowly, I unwrapped the ribbon from the parchment and rolled it out. Sure enough, Katara's smooth, fluid handwriting covered the page briefly, with a couple of unnecessary loops in her p's and her g's, with the intricately drawn Z she only used for my name, with the little round a's and narrow r's. I knew her manuscript left and right, but something was off about this particular one. The ink was splotchy in a couple of spots, and the sentences often ended in jerky spikes for letters.  
With increased anxiety, I scanned the letter, fighting the urge to scream and burn the palace to the ground as I finished.

_My dear prince,_

I turned around and ran back to where her suite was, where my mother once slept, as fast as my legs could carry me. I felt the curious eyes of noblemen and councilmen on me as I rushed past them, sometimes even knocking down a couple. But I didn't stop.  
I never stopped.

_By the time you read this I'll be somewhere near the Eastern Air Temple, well on my way to the South Pole. Love, I'm leaving you to help rebuild my home, I need to be there when it happens. You, who know me better and more thoroughly than I'm afraid to myself, must understand that my duty does not lie in the Fire Nation, among luxuries, privileges, and cherishing. I cannot bear the thought of enjoying your commodities while children are dying from hunger in my homeland…_

I reached her door and broke it down with an angry kick, sending wood splinters flying all across her room. The walls, which were once covered from ceiling to floor with waterbending techniques, were now bare, as were the bureaus she kept littered with her many hair clips, fragrances, necklaces, and other trivial material. My mother's bed, _her_ bed, was neatly made, not a wrinkle in place, and I dimly realized that her scent probably lingered on the sheets still. Her aura was there.

_Don't hate me, Zuko; I could never live with myself if you hated me, love… please just say you can forgive me and wait. Run your country, Zuko, rule the land like you used to tell me you would late at night, in hushed whispers. This isn't farewell for us, Prince, for I know the fates have dealt us much bigger a hand than we've played (Uncle taught me that one). One day, one day, my love, I will return.  
Don't forget me, Zuko, don't let anyone else occupy that room in which your scent and mine mingled for the first time. Just remember that, just like the snow in winter, I come again and I'll stay with you. You cannot imagine the sorrow that clenches my heart as my hand struggles to write this, and I'm ashamed you'll see the tears that stain the royal stationery… Please, love, if just for a moment each day, say you'll think of me often, think of me fondly whenever you can spare the minute. Spirits know this is the hardest thing I've ever had to do in my life, Zuko, the one thing you couldn't help me do.  
_

_Tell Uncle I said good-bye, and tell yourself I will return, Zuko. There will not be a day in my absence that will be spent without you in my thoughts, without the tearing in my heart that comes with missing you. Please know I love you more than I've ever loved anything or anyone in this life, and I count the days until we can be together again._

_Until then, my love, remember our kisses, cherish the touch, and believe in the promise of my memory till I can offer you more,_

I neared the bed and picked up the trinket lying on the right pillow, and smothered it in my large hand. I could feel tears pricking at the back of my eyes, but I held them back. Wood cracked under my feet as I exited the room, and faced the guards that had come to investigate the crash.  
"Your orders, my Lord?" one of them ventured.

I could feel the glass digging numbly into my skin as I replied, "Take the key to the chambers and send it in a black ribbon scroll to Lady Katara at once."  
One of the guards was feeling quite audacious, "Where to, my Lord?"  
The faintest of smiles quirked my lips, "I assume she's taken General Iroh's old fleet. Contact Admiral Ling."  
"Yes, my Lord."

With their retreat clear in my mind, I opened my hand and gazed down at the blue necklace that rested on my palm. It shone with the light of the sunrise, and it shone with the mirror promise of the key Katara would receive in a couple of days. The promise of two lovers awaiting each others' presence patiently, faithfully, eternally…

_With all the love in my heart,  
Katara…_

**A/N: well… This turned out differently than I thought it would, but I hoped you enjoyed it all the same.  
**

**Don't forget to drop your opinion by the review box!**

**TF**


End file.
